Check out this cool site: Froggy's Novelty Song Lyric Collection "of the lyrics of the greatest novelty songs enjoying popularity in the United States of America during the first third of the twentieth century as transcribed from period phonograph recordings."

Be sure to read his Introduction. It has some interesting insights.

Anyone who feels so inclined might want to copy some of his lyrics into this thread (after checking first, of course, that it isn't already in DT or another thread, and after inserting HTML line breaks).

Here's another one: Doc Wilson's Ragtime MIDI Files (with lyrics to many songs). Besides ragtime, the site also has a collection of Irving Berlin songs and WW1 songs.